In the years between the World Wars, the Soviet Union began experimenting
with different types of armour-piercing anti-tank cartridges. Finding the 12.7x108mm
insufficient, they began development of what would become the 14.5x114mmarmor
piercing round. Famous Soviet
weapons designers such as Vasily
Degtyaryov and Sergei
Gavrilovich Simonov designed rifles to accommodate this cartridge. In 1938,
Simonov designed the PTRS-41, a magazine fed, anti-tank rifle with a scaled down
version of it becoming the SKS
rifle.